Fabrizio Plessi was born in Reggio Emilia in 1940. He studied at art school and at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Venice, where he later became Chair of the Painting Department.

Until 1968, the key theme of his painting was water, which appeared in installations, films, video tapes and performances.

In 1978 he was invited to take part in the photography section for the special “L’Immagine Provocata” exhibition at the Venice Biennale.

Lack of space means the countless displays he put on between 1978 and the late 1990s cannot be mentioned, but, the following, which have been part of his intense and extraordinary activity since 2000, cannot be omitted:

In 2000, he created a large theatre installation entitled Naufragio della pittura (The Foundering of Painting) at Palazzo d’Accursio.

He created the monumental Mare Verticale (Vertical Sea) for the Italian Government in the pavilion of the Universal Expo in Hanover, which can be considered the largest technological sculpture ever built.

He represented Italy at the Kwangiu Biennale in Korea and, in the same year, he created the stage designs for the performance of Aterballetto’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, to an original score by Elvis Costello.

From 1990 to 2000, he was professor of Humanisation of Technology at the Kunsthochschule für Medien in Cologne, and as from 1994 he was the Chair of its new Electronic Stage Design Department.

In 2001 he showed Sei Cariatidi, six different installations characterised by a combination of electronic and humble materials at ArteFiera in Bologna, with Galleria Traghetto.

In April, he represented Italy and was guest of honour at the 8th International Cairo Biennale.

In June, Plessi showed his new multimedia L’Enigma degli Addii (The Enigma of Farewells) at the Peggy Guggenheim Foundation in Venice.

In October, the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao opened a solo exhibition where the famous Roma in travertine video-sculpture was made.

In 2002 at the Scuderie del Quirinale, he displayed 10 installations from New York, Cologne, Hanover, Vienna, Verona, San Diego, and from the Guggenheim, the Ludwig Museum, Kestner Gesellschaft, Fondazione Essl, Palazzo Forti, and the Museum of Contemporary Art.

Plessi created a unique work for the entrance to the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice: Digital Fall, technologically one of the most advanced sculptures in the world, with its own air-conditioning unit and a large, ultra-flat screen.

In the same year, he made an imposing installation for the Swarovski Kristallwelten Museum in Wattens, consisting of a huge suspended forest with electronic images of water, fire and crystals.

In 2004 Germany paid tribute to him with the great Traumwelt retrospective in Berlin.

In 2005, at ArteFiera, he exhibited his new Digital Stones series, dreamlike and evocative piles of stones, for the first time. For the Kistefoss Museet in Norway Plessi created Memory Motions: nine large installations of rotating logs, with random movements on various levels, set on mechanical frameworks.

In Germany again, the artist started up close cooperation with BMW with a series of projects in which automotive research was flanked by the poetics of artistic creation in a stimulating symbiosis of forms and materials.

He was invited to the 51st Biennale d’Arte in Venice for its special project in collaboration with the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

On this occasion, Plessi made a new version of his Vertical Sea, which rose up 44 metres from the waters of the lagoon opposite the entrance to the Biennale. A technological cascade fell down inside this enormous vertical shaft, and it became the symbol of the Biennale itself.

In the splendid architectural setting of the Mauroner gallery in Vienna, he put on his “Digital Stones” exhibition, an enthralling journey through Baroque Cathode Movements and a tribute to Freud in the year dedicated to him.